


my heart is in your teeth

by ikvros



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Sylvain/Mercedes, Blue Lions Route, Canon Compliant, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, M/M, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Sexual Tension, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:14:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25676419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikvros/pseuds/ikvros
Summary: “Spar with me,” Felix said, before he could stop himself.“Have you not had enough on the battlefield?”Felix walked forward with a new determination. Across the pitch, broken and overgrown beneath his feet, unwavering—straight into the lion’s den. When he neared, Dimitri still did not look at him. He kept his eye down the line of his blade, and Felix dared to lift fingertips to it; pressed down until the edge bit into his skin and threatened to draw blood.“Have you?”In which Felix loves Dimitri the only way he knows how.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 38
Kudos: 212





	my heart is in your teeth

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to zeal, with love. you're the reason i began this journey, though i did not expect it to take me four months ;-; happy very, very belated birthday, friend.

☾☾☾

Garreg Mach was quiet all the time now, but at night it felt vacant. 

The guards and staff were sparse, stretched between shifts and excess duties required to make the monastery a habitable place after five years of structural vacancy and pillaging. There were no merchants to haggle in the marketplace, no instructors or students left to keep the rooms free of dust or cold or quiet. Even the most frequented halls were empty at this hour, torches and candles long snuffed out. 

_It’s sorta eerie,_ Annette had said of it. _And sad. Things are so different now._

But Felix quite liked having the training grounds all to himself, and could see just fine by the light of the moon. Indulging in sentiment was a pointless distraction—things were the way they were, and if he was to play a part in changing any of them, he’d have to live through the war ahead. 

That meant being stronger than his enemies. It meant taking up his sword and swinging until his hands blistered, until he could take on _any_ foe and win. It meant ignoring everything but the reconnaissance in letters from his father and shrugging off Sylvain and avoiding late-night detours that cut into necessary sleep. 

Especially when they led to places Dimitri might be.

But Dimtiri didn’t have sole fucking _dominion_ over the cathedral, and what business he could have possibly had with the Goddess was beyond Felix. He’d never known Dimitri to place his faith in divinity; knew that he certainly wouldn’t seek guidance or solace in it as he was now. But there he was in clear view through the grand doors, where Felix had paused.

Draped in shadow and moonlight, standing before the rubble of the altar, he could have been another of the Saint Statues. 

It was a ridiculous thought. Up close, Dimitri looked like what he was: a dirty, matted, towering beast. He paced and growled like one. He spoke only of killing, of enemies and traitors and the dead. He looked past whoever spoke to him—even the professor, who had not been able to tame him but could get close enough, some days, to convince him to bathe.

Felix wasn’t interested in _rehabilitating_ a feral animal. He listened to Mercedes speak of hope and pray to the Goddess—for Fódlan, their friends, the good in their rightful king—and found himself looking down on her. There was no hope for Dimitri. There was only bottomless black, a heart soaked in vengeance, a bloodlust. Any time spent worrying over a madman was wasted. 

And yet.

Felix entered the cathedral, hair standing on end and fingers twitching toward the sword at his belt. His footsteps echoed too loudly in the vast emptiness of a space built to house an entire monastery for prayer. 

Dimitri was still—not turning, as Felix’s imagination had supplied, to bare his teeth or raise his weapon, but totally unmoving even as Felix reached the end of the nave and came to stand behind him, keeping a cautious distance.

“Do you ever sleep, boar? Or do you slink around in the shadows at all hours?” 

Dimitri, predictably, said nothing. Felix knew it wasn’t a matter of inattention.

“I’ve been wondering—what do you intend to do once she’s dead? Continue on with your madness? Hunt down every last ally? Leave the Kingdom to ruin while you abandon your throne?”

Silence. Resounding silence.

“I can only guess,” Felix said, treading perilously closer, “but it makes sense that you haven’t thought that far ahead. You just revel in the bloodshed. Your own allies mean nothing to you.”

Nothing. Not a twitch, a flicker of motion. It was frustrating. Dimitri had never risen with anger to Felix’s barbs; had only ever accepted his complaints and insults with that abasing humility of his. Felix had hated him more for it then, but Dimitri had at least _reacted._ He had been man enough, if not to feel shame, then to wear it like a skin in Felix’s presence.

But without a threat present, a beast would only lose interest. 

Felix hadn’t drawn his sword three quarters out of its sheath before Dimitri turned, too fast for him to properly grip or raise it, and knocked it easily from his hand with the brunt of his forearm. It went flying blade-first, shuddering against the ground and spinning across it with an awful, ringing clatter.

It hit something solid—a pew, maybe—but Felix didn’t look, because Dimitri fisted his hand in his shirt and hauled him so close that the new difference in their height and breadth and strength became startlingly apparent. 

“Do not _provoke me,”_ Dimitri snarled.

Felix’s attention narrowed to the strength of Dimitri's grip. He reached for the offending arm on instinct and found it ungiving beneath the armor, immovable as the monastery walls. His cheek dampened with Dimitri’s breath. His pulse fluttered.

“Or what?” he breathed. “You’ll kill me, too?”

And Felix did worry, for a moment. He was practically untouchable with a sword, but facing _Dimitri_ with nothing but his fists would not be a fight that favored him. It would be akin to fighting a demonic beast in the same fashion, or a very large northern bear. No matter what Felix wanted to believe about his own hand-to-hand combat skills, he would come out of it bloody and broken and probably dead.

“Let go of me,” he said, because it was the least incendiary of the things that threatened to tear from his mouth.

Dimitri glared down at him through shadowed lashes, eye a glinting, stained-glass blue. “If you get in my way…”

“You really are insane.” He couldn’t keep his lip from curling, his chin from raising. “We’re on the same damn side.” 

“Are we?” 

“Let _go.”_

A beat passed between them. Two. Something like fear prickled up the back of Felix’s neck. 

Then Dimitri shoved him away, and Felix fell backward, limbs sprawling ungracefully, empty scabbard clanging against stone as he hit the ground. The impact rattled his bones and shattered through the stillness of the cathedral, echoing.

Felix quickly raised himself up until he was sitting, numbed with shock. He was fine, physically—he’d taken more than a tumble in his lifetime, and his head hadn’t hit the ground. The pain was a dull, familiar thing, hardly different from getting laid out in the pitch. But his ears felt hot, and his heart was in his stomach.

“Leave me,” Dimitri said, turning away. It was more of a growl, with its rumbling edge, but Felix could hear the voice beneath it. He tried not to recall what it sounded like all that time ago around Dimitri’s gentle, infuriating niceties. He got to his feet and retrieved his sword, slid the weight of it back into place with a new heat licking beneath his skin.

To think this shell of a human being was the same boy he’d clung to as a child, reassured. His prince. Faerghus’ future. 

“I thought you were dead, for a while,” he said, poised for the doors. “We all did. Before we caught wind of your massacres.” His back was turned, fingers tight around his scabbard. “If this is all you are now, I wish you would have just stayed that way.”

He knew he’d regret it even as it left his lips, but not enough to stop it. Not enough to take it back. He tasted the anger it left on his tongue, felt the dizzying gravity of it bear down on him. He thought he might have meant it, just then. 

Felix waited a moment. But Dimitri didn’t answer him, and he couldn’t stick around to think about why the ache in his chest felt like grief.

⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅

In two day’s time, they would march toward Enbarr. 

Felix was restless, as he always was before a campaign, though his anticipation was not the eager sort. There would be nothing thrilling about the thorough depletion of their armies in the coming weeks, the senseless and avoidable slaughter. Dimitri wouldn’t be able to get close enough to lay hands on the emperor without sacrificing most of their men; of that, Felix was certain.

And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Dimitri was out of his damn mind and still had the unwavering support of every Kingdom loyalist that could spare a company, including his own father. Going to Enbarr now was a suicide mission, and they knew it, and they were all still marching happily toward their deaths. Long live the king, to the eternal flames with everyone else.

Felix wouldn’t be one of the casualties. That single determination led him where it always did: swinging his sword into the late hours was better than laying in bed and enduring the urge to crawl out of his own skin.

He no longer had the training grounds to himself during the day; their numbers had increased and it was always full of his father’s men, now. It wasn’t bad per _say_ —he was never without a sparring partner, and the great fun that was laying out particularly arrogant or overzealous soldiers could not be denied, especially when he kept in mind who it was they followed.

The crash and clamor was all good and well, but he’d grown used to the quiet, and sometimes preferred it. He preferred it right now.

This was, of course, at least partially to blame for Dimitri’s presence there upon his arrival. Wherever Felix wished him not to be, he was. Whatever Felix wished him not to do, he did. If there was a Goddess, she was surely laughing at him as he glowered from behind a pillar, shadowed by the overhead eave. Waiting. Observing.

To see Dimitri with a sword in his hand was both strange and familiar. Wielding it required a different range of motion than the lance, and Felix realized the last time he’d seen Dimitri practice with one had been over five years ago.

What was immediately obvious was that he had not properly wielded a sword in a long time. There was all of the raw, poised power of his body, and none of the finesse. There was tension in his posture, sweat at his temple. For him to look exerted—he’d had to have been here for hours already. He’d forgone the ridiculous, cumbersome cloak, had even tied his hair back out of his face so that all that obscured it was the worn black eyepatch and the few wisps that had been shaken from the leather.

As he moved, Felix saw the familiar shadow beneath his one visible eye, the healing cut across his cheek—perhaps sustained from a stray arrow, or a close swing, or a bit of shrapnel from the flaming missile that rained down and pitted the earth where soldiers once stood. War was bloody and devastating. Even the beast rarely came out of battle unscathed.

On the path he was forging, few would come out of it at all.

“What do you want?” It came calm, and slightly breathless. Dimitri wasn’t looking at him, but he said, “Felix.”

Felix stiffened, then slowly stepped into the light, onto the pitch.

“With you?” The distaste curdled in his voice. “Nothing. I came here to train.”

“It’s an expansive training yard,” Dimitri said. “I will not disturb you.”

It was a dismissal, brusque as ever—not the violent shove he’d gotten in the cathedral, but a refusal all the same to converse, or to fight. Were they supposed to ignore each other here, of all places? Did Dimitri really think him so easily brushed aside? Felix would cleave him in an instant. He was getting nowhere fighting with the dry mountain air.

“Spar with me,” Felix said, before he could stop himself. 

“Have you not had enough on the battlefield?”

Felix walked forward with a new determination. Across the pitch, broken and overgrown beneath his feet, unwavering—straight into the lion’s den. When he neared, Dimitri still did not look at him. He kept his eye down the line of his blade, and Felix dared to lift fingertips to it; pressed down until the edge bit into his skin and threatened to draw blood.

“Have you?”

Dimitri lowered the sword and finally met his eyes. “You trust a monster to spar fairly.”

Trust was…not the right word. Even a dulled practice weapon would cause fatal injury if its wielder didn’t observe proper etiquette, if they were particularly unskilled or unwary or otherwise careless. For Dimitri’s part, he had never known his own strength, and had been battling on the edge of life and death for five years running. It was possible that restraint was now beyond him. If they crossed swords, and Felix faltered, there was a chance Dimitri would follow through with killing force and then some.

Felix stepped back and drew. “The sword is _my_ specialty, boar King. Don’t underestimate me.”

He didn’t know what he would do if he was rejected again—charge, perhaps. Or give up as he should have long ago. 

Dimitri’s eye narrowed. “Fine,” he said at last.

It took everything in Felix not to react—to let his eyes widen, or his lips curl up in what felt like such childish victory. He planted his feet, squared his shoulders, and let the familiar weight of the sword steady his hand as Dimitri mirrored him. 

Felix lunged first. 

Dimitri neatly side-stepped, swinging around only to lay a strike at Felix’s exposed back. Felix whirled, and countered easily, too easily, letting his blade slide enough to stop the momentum before he pulled free. Then he struck again, harder this time, and Dimitri parried—Felix braced his arm for a show of Blaiddyd force, but none came. Dimitri pushed off, and Felix hesitated a moment before pursuing him.

He was met with more evasion. Again, Dimitri swung around, and Felix turned with him, half a second too slow, expecting to weather a blow but finding the tip of Dimitri’s sword instead at a frustrating distance, so that any maneuver became ineffectual without first taking a step and recalculating. 

It went on like that for a few minutes: Dimitri engaging half-heartedly, and then pivoting away when Felix gave chase, raising his guard. 

He knew it wasn’t out of caution. They’d been fighting the same battles for months now—he had observed himself the differences in Dimitri’s form, the changes born from five years of slaughter and survival. The dulled broadsword was no Hero’s Relic, but its wielder was a powerhouse all the same, and his technique had _always_ been to go head-to-head. To crouch like an animal and lunge like one. To go for the kill. 

But now he was playing a game in which Felix felt increasingly like the mouse. Dimitri was hulking, deadly, yet light on his feet as he led them in circles. To call it grace seemed ridiculous, but that’s what it was: practiced and calculated, reminiscent of a stage performance. The realization struck him in a way Dimitri’s blade had not.

“You’re not _fighting me,”_ he said when they’d squared yet again. “You’re dancing.”

Dimitri said, breathing less labored than it had been when Felix found him, left hand still tucked neatly behind his back, “I thought you wished to spar, not to die.”

Felix didn’t charge blindly. He might have, long ago—rushed Dimitri without a second thought, prepared to fight tooth and nail, uncaring of the brute resistance or who held the upper-hand in a fight like that. All his life, Felix had tried to fight the way Glenn did: recklessly, relentlessly, on instinct alone. Strength had always been his sole pursuit—if his back was put in the dirt, it simply meant he needed to hone it.

But things were different now: Glenn was dead. If Dimitri put his back in the dirt, it would be over. And Felix had long come to understand that every soldier had their own strengths and weaknesses; that getting the upper hand in _any_ fight was only ever a matter of exploiting his opponent’s, and utilizing his own.

“I guess those childhood lessons didn’t go to waste after all."

It was the right thing to say—or the wrong one. Not even three seconds had passed, but Dimitri was charging him, and Felix had little time to react, except to dodge. It spoke only to his knowledge of the way Dimitri moved that his sword wasn’t wrenched out of his hand in the next moment, when Dimitri’s came low, and drove upward, under his guard.

Felix moved with the blow instead of against it; let Dimitri’s sword glance off of his before springing back, arm ringing all the way up to his elbow with the effort of keeping his grip. And then—he lunged forward again, and Dimitri finally met him halfway.

It wasn’t really a fair fight. Felix had an edge; the sword _was_ his specialty. He was fast, and agile, and stronger than most men in his own right, and he had not been exerting himself for hours already. 

Though Dimitri was equipped with reflexes that at times seemed inhuman, he really was too accustomed now to fighting with the lance—the weight and balance of it, the extension it lended him, its multiuse in close quarters. He’d trained thoroughly in all weaponry as a boy because he was a prince and a knight of Faerghus, but he’d always favored the lance, and it seemed it had been his only companion during his exile. The mistakes he was making were those of disuse, and quick remembering. 

It was not long before Felix found an opening. He cut and lunged with ferocity he usually reserved for real battle, so intent on knocking down what seemed to be the steadily crumbling wall of Dimitri’s restraint. And then he feinted for the the first time since they’d begun, and Dimitri took the bait like a dumb dog. 

In the next moment, Felix had his blade angled right under Dimitri’s breastplate, at the heart. If it were a fight to the death, Felix would have driven it forward, straight through the segmented armor, and Dimitri would have met his end. 

“I yield.” It came freely. The muscles in Dimitri’s jaw slackened. “You’ve…improved.”

It was true. Felix was an excellent swordsman, and demonstrating it felt good. But he didn’t want to hear it from Dimitri’s maw.

“Shut up,” he said, lowering his sword. He moved away. “Again. And don’t hold back this time.”

There was no refusal. Dimitri engaged him again, without pause or warning, and met him blow for blow in a new display of enthusiasm. A hard laugh tore out of Felix’s throat as they clashed together and apart—keeping him at bay required all of Felix’s will, and most of his concentration, and Dimitri was still not going all out. He was trying, now, and it was not _enough,_ but—it was something. And they had the entire night ahead of them.

It happened because he was distracted. A momentary thing, but that was all it ever took. His feet were kicked out from under him, and the world tilted before his back hit the stone with force, the wind knocked from his lungs, the stars blurring above. He was able to rise only enough to get an arm under himself, to see Dimitri’s blade coming down at his neck.

Felix still had time to bring his sword up—to stop the momentum and roll away, get to his feet, and keep the fight going like he had wanted for so long.

But he did not. The hilt was lead in his hand. He was conscious of his own stillness, his warring instincts, the sound of the blade cutting through the air, inevitable. He could feel on his neck exactly where it would meet, a cold phantom sensation his body willed him to flinch away from, too late. The choice was made before he realized it. He squeezed his eyes shut. There was a sharp ringing past his ear that he’d only ever experienced in battle, because weapons did not move that quickly or forcefully toward something unless they were meant to kill. 

And then—nothing.

Felix only knew he wasn’t dead because his heart was hammering so violently against his ribcage that it hurt. His chest was heaving. When he opened his eyes again, he found Dimitri’s blade a hair's breadth away from his neck.

“I yield,” Felix said, like his own sword wasn’t on the ground. Like he hadn’t left it there.

Dimitri’s expression hardened. “You threw that. You left yourself wide open.” His voice wavered, almost imperceptibly, but Felix could hear it—the quiet anger in its timbre. The fear. “I could have taken your head from your shoulders.”

“But you didn’t,” Felix said. Dimitri hadn’t killed him. The adrenaline was a slowly-waning roar in his ears, and he felt lightheaded, but he said, “Again.”

“No. I am done for the night.” Dimitri dropped his sword in the dirt and spun around toward the gate. 

Felix got to his feet. “Again!”

Dimitri halted, a yard away now. He went very still.

“What is it that you’re trying to prove?”

“I—” 

“You have despised me since long ago. I am everything you said I was. And now you _mislead_ yourself into believing that…” Dimitri didn’t finish that thought. “My only goal is to kill that woman,” he said. “The dead will not rest until I do. It is their will, and mine.”

It must have been the thousandth time Felix had heard it, but it was different—hollow, somehow, like a repeated prayer that had long lost its meaning.

“The dead are dead. They don’t have wills.”

Dimitri’s answering laugh made Felix’s skin prickle. It was jagged, volcanic rock, low and dark as night. “They do,” he said. “I hear them.”

“So you keep saying.”

Dimitri didn’t answer him. He began to walk away, and something inside Felix snapped.

Rushing forward and grabbing on was a matter of poor judgment, the same arrogance he’d trained out of his swordsmanship. He curled his hand around Dimitri’s arm and pulled, and felt the delay—the shock that went through Dimitri at the touch, the locking muscle, the immovable solidness of him. 

He turned of his own volition, and Felix felt that, too. Dimitri spun with the same lethal force that amazed Felix every time it was turned on him, and didn't touch. He towered, curling down so that their faces were close. So close that Felix could see a pinked edge of the scar that curved up from beneath Dimitri’s eyepatch, and the faded one through his brow, where he had not before noticed it divided the fine blond hairs.

Dimitri reeked of sweat and dirt. Lathered heat poured from his body, proof that he had fought hard, that his win had not been effortless. Felix had drawn something out of him with his sword, and pushed it back into place with nothing more than his own exposed neck—it had been difficult, and risky, and worth it. This feeling—whatever it was—had been worth it.

Felix couldn’t breathe. He wanted to run, to tell Dimitri to _let go_ even as he found himself pulled forward by—what? His own lost mind? There was the fear again, palpable, but it was not for something so vital as his life. He was reminded of that night in the cathedral, what it was to be this close to Dimitri and still so far away. Here they were, with mere inches between their faces, and seven years between their friendship. 

“More and more,” Dimitri said lowly, “I sense it is not a fight you seek.”

Unwelcome heat rose up Felix’s neck. His lips parted to speak, but his voice was caught in his throat, held down by the weight of Dimitri’s pellucid, one-eyed gaze—which fell to Felix’s mouth in the next moment, as if it had been wrenched there. 

Felix recalled very suddenly that he was the one who’d grabbed on. He jerked away, staggering backwards, and Dimitri looked after him, arm still held out, unmoving. 

“Don’t make me vomit,” Felix managed. “I have no desire to fuck animals.”

Dimitri straightened at that, arm falling a little limply to his side. His expression was—unreadable. When he turned again, there was stiffness in his shoulders that a long sparring session should have melted away. But Dimitri was always like that now: body prone and defenses raised, like he was carrying the world and fighting it at once.

“Prepare yourself for the battle ahead, and turn your energy toward your friends. It would be better spent,” he said. He didn’t say _Our_ _friends._ They were no longer _Dimitri’s_ friends. Or his subjects. Everyone called him the king, but he wasn’t one. Not really. 

Felix didn’t stop him from leaving this time.

⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅

The air in northern Faerghus was cold even during the warmer moons, but early spring melted the snow from the evergreens and coaxed new buds from the trees that shed. His father always said that spring began in Fhirdiad; that warmth spread to every other place in the Kingdom from the Royal Palace itself. It had persevered better than Garreg Mach in the five years it had fallen to Imperial hands, but it was still less beautiful now than Felix remembered it.

Perhaps it was because the old man was dead.

“Just like old times, huh?” Sylvain stood beside Felix on the terrace with his hands laced behind his head, gazing across the courtyard.

Felix, incredulously: “Are you joking?”

“Mostly.” Sylvain’s smile turned rueful. “But we _are_ all here together.”

 _Not all of us,_ Felix wanted to say, and didn’t. The Margrave was still in Gautier, the Count in Galatea, his own family and Dimitri’s six feet in the ground. 

They wouldn’t be tied up in meetings and dealings with courtiers while Sylvain dragged Felix along to cause trouble, and Glenn wouldn’t spar with Felix in the training yard, and Felix wouldn’t make fun of Ingrid for making her stupid googly eyes at him. He wouldn’t end the trip with a leisurely ride back to Fraldarius, on which he would finally have the opportunity to tell his father of his adventures. The magic of this place had long dispersed. 

It would never be like old times again.

But everywhere, there were memories: in the courtyard, where Felix once tripped while running during a game of tag, badly sprained his ankle, and cried for two hours because he could no longer play outside with the others; in the east gardens, where Felix once caught Ingrid and Glenn about to kiss and screamed so loud the guards came running; in the forest on the palace grounds, where he and Dimitri—to the constant distress of their nursemaids—would hide in the trees for hours to watch the units run drills.

He’d been here more times than he could count, before he’d even _learned_ to count—those days all seemed to blur together into one long, winding dream. But some memories were their own. 

There was one during the earliest years Felix could remember, the summer he learned to ride. He was wildly envious of Dimitri, who had already begun his lessons in the spring, and could sit tall and proud in his saddle alongside Glenn. It was like they were born for it: Blaiddyyd and Fraldarius, brothers in arms, together from young. And all Felix could do was watch from the window, small and jealous.

He spent his first weeks at the palace mastering it with a vengeance: how to go and stop and speed up and slow; how to move with the horse instead of against it; where to press his legs, and why, and how hard. The instructor scolded him for his impatience, but that was something he’d been born with, like his brother. He practiced until it was not the back of Dimitri’s golden head he was staring at, but the open field as he rode astride him, then past him, giddy with victory.

It was short-lived. Dimitri caught up, of course, because Felix’s horse could only be urged into a canter. _I knew you’d be good at this, Felix,_ he said anyway. His smile was bright and sweet and hopelessly sincere, and any resentment Felix felt melted in the sun like snow.

He trained in other things that summer, too. But mostly he rode and followed Dimitri around the palace.

When the Verdant Rain moon arrived and it was nearly time to go back to Fraldarius, King Lambert gifted Felix his first palfrey, as he’d done for Glenn two years previous—a beautiful but temperamental black gelding that secretly reminded Felix of Glenn. His name was Cinder, and Felix decidedly adored him, even after he tried mounting him for the first time and was promptly thrown from his back.

 _“He reminds me of you,”_ Dimitri said, smiling. They were in the stables, and had pushed a hay bale against the stall door to stand on so that they could both see over it to watch Cinder snuffle at the straw that lined the ground. 

_“Me?”_ Felix said. _“Why?”_

_“You have the same personality.”_

Felix frowned. There was still the aching bruise on his backside from when he’d fallen off. _“Do not,”_ he mumbled, wanly leaning his chin into his hands where they were folded over the wood. 

_“And you both have lovely dark hair,”_ Dimitri said, reaching out to touch Felix’s. Felix let him. _“Like nighttime.”_

 _“I’m gonna miss you,”_ Felix said. He was looking at Cinder, who was watching him in return, eyes black and curious. He felt the tickle of Dimitri’s fingers as he pulled them away. _“I don’t wanna go.”_

 _“I’ll miss you, too,”_ Dimitri said. _“But Father told me he and Rodrigue have known each other since they were our age, and they see each other all the time.”_

Felix considered that. _"_ _We will, too? You, Glenn, and I?”_

 _“Yes,”_ Dimitri said, smiling. _“When I’m king, we’ll spend every summer just like this. I promise.”_

How stupid and naive they’d both been. Children were simple-minded and knew nothing of the world.

“There you are. What are you two doing?” It was Ingrid, stepping out onto the terrace behind them.

“Reminiscing,” Sylvain said. “Wanna join us?”

“We can do that later,” Ingrid said. “His Majesty is about to stand before the people. I think he deserves our support.”

It was said more to Felix than Sylvain. Felix knew this because he could feel Ingrid’s eyes burning holes into the back of his head. It was no secret to anyone that his relationship with Dimitri was strained at best, and if it had been, Ingrid still would have known it. 

Felix gazed up over the towering spires of the palace, and beyond them, into the cloudless blue sky. They had liberated Fhirdiad, and the significance of that that was not lost on him. Their army still stood, and Dimitri was the fierce king, returned. The whole city was rejoicing with the news. There was a strange hope inside Felix, inside everyone.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose he has gotten us this far.”

⋅•✧────── ♞ ──────✧•⋅

They were deep within Adrestian territory now. They’d had no trouble after taking Fort Merceus, but garrisons and the luxuries of the occasional inns and town surrounding were something they’d left back in Alliance lands, where the civilians weren’t hostile and the threat of Imperial forces wasn’t a constant sword at their backs. 

They also had limited supplies. Most of the Kingdom’s dwindling funds were stretched to secure all of the needed artillery, and the means with which to carry it, and it meant little of the comforts of home even for the high-ranking generals. It was two commanders to every tent, and as many soldiers as could fit in one.

Felix happened to be sharing his with Sylvain. 

This was not ideal, because Sylvain snored loudly enough to keep Felix awake half the night; and it would have been _terrible,_ except that there were no women around that were not already privy to Sylvain’s antics, and even his Crest and boyish charm would not have been able to make him less grimy from days of travel across the countryside. 

Felix was not exactly fresh himself. They could use wet cloth to wipe down the worst of things, but they could bathe with soap only when there was a body of water nearby, and usually did so in groups; to many of the other nobles, it was an uncomfortable shock. Up until the war, they’d always had private bath houses. Now, they didn’t even have privacy—the only bathtub in the entire camp belonged to the king.

There was a free-flowing stream through the forest they set camp around, wide and crystal clear. Most of the men in their company had gone up uphill to bathe; from there they could look out for danger and also take advantage of the force the downward slope lent the water. Felix, who was used to wartime accommodations but still valued his privacy over both of those things, did not join them.

Instead he’d finished pitching the tent alone, and by the time it was done he could feel the sweat rolling down his back in the setting Adrestian sun.

“I would’ve helped, you know,” Sylvain said when he walked up, clad only in clean smallclothes, wet uniform draped over his shoulder.

“And it would have fallen over on us in our sleep,” Felix said, tying down the last of the canvas loops. “You can put on some clothes and get us something to eat. And then unpack the rest.”

“You mean the bedrolls?”

Felix narrowed his eyes, and Sylvain held his hands up and ducked into the dent. He peeked out a moment later, and Felix rose from his haunches, wiping his palms on his dusty breeches.

“What?”

“No offense, Felix, but uh…please don’t come in until after you’ve bathed. I can smell you—like, from here.” 

Felix scowled at him. “I was planning on going later,” he said.

“After dark, you mean. By yourself.” 

“That’s the idea.”

Sylvain sighed. “I won’t try to stop you.”

“Good. You can’t.”

“There’s a deer path through the trees,” Sylvain pointed east, “where my men were gathering firewood. At least take it so I know where to look if you turn up missing, yeah?”

Sylvain said it with mirth on his face, but Felix could tell that he was biting his tongue. Going alone was a reckless and self-important thing to do, and he knew it—he had no right to scold Sylvain for worrying, so he pursed his lips together and gave a single, acquiescing nod.

When it was dark, he went to bathe.

The trees were very different here, even from the ones that surrounded Garreg Mach. The forest was made up of towering redwoods and cypresses that only grew this tall near the coastline—so tall that Felix could not see exactly where their canopies ended in the dark. Everything was green and mossy and bursting with life, draping vines and insects. He smacked at a mosquito on his neck—he was glad they didn’t have these in Faerghus.

Sylvain was right that he would be alone. The moon was nearly full and lit the way well enough, but it was still after dark in a hostile land, and most men had a sense of self-preservation. Battle was life-threatening enough, and death by unfortunate fall or random monster or bandit attack, to a knight, was not very honorable.

But Felix didn’t care about honor, and feared little as long as his sword was within reach. And he was very careful about where he stepped.

The murmur of the stream grew louder as he pushed aside the branches of a large shrub—he was almost on it. And then an unnatural noise gave him pause. Over the flow of water ahead, there was a splash.

It wasn’t a splash against rock or bark, an obstacle the stream might have beat at before flowing around. The foliage was too dense to see through. He ceased walking, held his breath, listened.

It happened again, longer this time. A splash, unrhythmic, against something more yielding than stone. A pouring. His hand went to his sword. He pulled aside the last branch blocking his view, slowly, and looked, eyes straining in the darkness.

And nearly gave away his presence with the startled noise that tried to tear from his throat.

Really, he should have known. They could give a king a bathtub, but this one would still choose the wild like the beast he was. 

That might have been unfair. There was nothing beastly or uncivilized about the way Dimitri was washing himself in the stream. 

Or about his physique, visible from the mid-thigh-up. It was…very human, all things considered, the way he cupped the water; the way he poured it atop his head. The way it shimmered down his body in little rivulets, over flexing muscle and scars and skin. The world seemed to fall to pieces as Felix took in the full view of Dimitri’s nakedness—his backside, thankfully, or perhaps that was worse—and he let go of the flimsy branch he’d peeled back like it had burned him.

A mistake. It sprung back into place, disturbing the foliage around it, and the forest went silent as he spun and pressed himself behind a large tree trunk. The quality of the air changed, wound itself taut as a bowstring. If the stream could have stopped murmuring, Felix was sure it would have. He imagined Dimitri turning, too, staring straight through the trees, seeing all. 

Felix could only listen and try not to breathe too loudly.

But no inquiry came. Dimitri didn’t leap from the stream to drag him from the shadows, to maul him alive while he was wet and naked as the day he was born. After a while, the sounds of washing resumed.

Felix couldn’t risk making any more noise. He was _stuck_ behind that damn tree while Dimitri took his sweet time, mind filled with the illuminated image of new musculature that Felix had of course noticed but had not seen beyond what the fit of Dimitri’s armor and the broad span of his shoulders conveyed. 

And now he couldn’t not see it. He couldn’t not feel the hot flash that ran over his body as he saw it over and over again, that fluid movement, the cascade of the water, the way it dripped. He endured this for what might have been a few minutes or an hour, until Dimitri was done and dressing himself.

He had to hold very still. Dimitri’s lingering presence was investigative, and so irritating that Felix wanted to step out from behind the tree just to put a stop to it—but he couldn’t do that. Not if he wanted to retain any amount of the dignity that was slipping between his fingers with every moment that veered toward his discovery.

Just _leave,_ he thought, as hard as he could. Dimitri’s footsteps slowly receded. When Felix was sure he was gone, he still waited a moment. Better safe than sorry. 

And then—finally. He bathed. 

The water felt good and cool, but it was beyond him to enjoy it. He washed quickly, urgently, with none of the leisure that should have come with having a few minutes of solitude, and resolutely did not touch the part of himself that swelled with interest beyond what was strictly necessary to clean it. Of all the times, for all of the people. Felix had seen attractive naked and nearly-naked men often enough in his life and had remained perfectly unaffected, physically—there was no reason for this. He couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t make sense of it.

But it had all been Sylvain’s doing. He was sure of that.

“I was starting to worry you drowned out there,” Sylvain said when Felix barreled through their tent flap. Felix was dressed, but his hair was loose and still dripping wet—he _felt_ like a drowned cat, and probably looked like one too.

“You,” he said, and stopped. Reigned himself in. “You are an absolutely despicable excuse for a friend. Or—a decent human being, for that matter.”

“Ouch.” Sylvain looked up from where he’d been laying out his bedroll. “What did I do this time?”

“You failed to mention that the boar would be—he was—!” Felix could feel himself making all kinds of expressions, spluttering around his words like a fool.

“Are you okay?”

 _“Bathing,”_ Felix hissed. “In the stream. I saw him.”

“What, _really?_ Did he see you?” Sylvain was grinning. Felix leaned down to grab his own bundled bedroll and hurled it straight at Sylvain’s head. It was dodged—narrowly. “Hey, come on! How was I supposed to know?”

Felix crossed his arms over his chest. “I think you knew.” 

“Actually, I didn’t. I couldn’t have. I wouldn’t have been able to set that up without some seriously perfect timing—do you really think I’d put effort into all of that? Only to get verbally _and_ physically assaulted by you? Not worth it,” Sylvain said, going back to his bedroll. “Besides, if I had a death wish, I’d just wait until we reached Enbarr.”

“That’s not funny.”

Sylvain looked up at him again, and Felix’s expression must have been severe, because his own gentled. “Okay, fine. I’m sorry. But the thing about Dimitri—it’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal.”

Sylvain shrugged. “We all saw each other naked when we were little.”

“You are unbelievable.”

“And you are seriously repressed, my friend. This is why you should have spent less time training and more time socializing. If you’d actually hit it off with someone back at the Academy, maybe the human form wouldn’t make you blush like a schoolgirl.”

“I—do not blush. He’s the _king,”_ Felix said. 

Sylvain looked unimpressed. “Yeah, ‘cause you _totally_ care about propriety. Especially when it comes to His Majesty.”

Felix sighed heavily and finally sank to the ground, back against one of the tent posts. “We’re barely on speaking terms. I don’t—think of him like that.”

“Sure,” Sylvain said easily. He was laying out Felix’s bedroll now, and Felix looked on, frowning.

“I don’t.”

“Okay. But would it be the end of the world if you did?”

“Excuse me?”

“Look, as someone who has known you for your entire life—”

“That’s pushing it.”

“—no offense,” Sylvain said, “but Dimitri’s the only person I’ve ever seen you really…look at.”

“You’re mistaking disdain for desire.”

The resounding silence told Felix that Sylvain thought it was the other way around.

“I get it,” Sylvain said after a while. He sat on the ground between their bedrolls, cross-legged, with a strange, far-away gaze. “Things are complicated. Love is complicated. Except for when it’s simple.”

Felix scowled.“Who said anything about love? That was useless advice, even for you.”

“You wound me.” Sylvain placed a hand over his chest. “Is that any way to talk to a newly betrothed man?”

“Ha ha,” Felix said, but Sylvain didn’t laugh. He just stared back at Felix, expectant. Felix said, “You must be joking.” And then, as the seconds passed and it dawned on him that Sylvain was not joking, “You’re _betrothed?”_

“Well, not on paper. I haven’t even had a chance to buy her a ring yet. Or tell my family. We’ve decided to wait until after the war. But if we both make it out of this, I’m gonna marry her.”

Sylvain waxing on about women he cared nothing about had been commonplace for as long as Felix had known him. It was not difficult to see a facade for what it was when he knew sincerity on the same face, and after the third or fourth woman in the same moon, neither was it difficult to determine that Sylvain absolutely did not mean anything he said about matters of the heart.

But there was no teeth-baring grin now, no playful flash in his eyes as he leveled his gaze and waited. And he never spoke of _marriage_. Love, yes. Passion, yes. Sex—yes. But not binding contracts that sealed a future he had always dreaded.

Felix balked. “You’re—serious about this.”

“Yeah.”

“Who is she?”

Sylvain fell back onto his bedroll with a sigh. “The most beautiful, wonderful woman I’ve ever known. She pulls me as close to the Goddess as I’ll ever be.”

“Gross. Tell me it’s not Flayn.”

“What’d I say about having a death wish?”

Felix thought for a moment. “The professor?”

Sylvain did laugh, then, heartily, and it was so carefree that Felix couldn’t help laughing a little, too. He almost asked if it was Ingrid, but he didn’t want to guess incorrectly a third time.

He didn’t have to. Sylvain propped himself up on his elbows, laughter waned into a dopey smile. His eyes were golden and soft, sincere as Felix had ever seen them. “It’s Mercedes,” he said.

“Mercedes.” Felix nodded slowly, digesting that. “How did that happen?”

“She sees me,” Sylvain said, like that explained everything. “I’m in love with her.”

“And she loves you back.”

“We’re betrothed, aren’t we?”

“Apparently. I can’t quite wrap my head around it.”

“You’ll see,” Sylvain said. He laid back again, staring up at the canvas ceiling. “I was wondering if you’d present the rings at the wedding.”

“Me?” 

“Yeah. You have a sword, don’t you? Who else would I want?” 

Felix was speechless for a moment. Rare fondness was surging in his chest, alongside guilt—in all the time they spent together during this campaign, how had he not noticed what an idiotic, love-struck fool Sylvain had become?

The answer seemed quite obvious and very naked in his mind, but he opted to ignore it.

Sylvain said, “I could ask Ingrid—” 

“Shut up.” Felix was shaking his head, smiling now. “You know I will. I’m happy for you. I mean it.”

“Thanks. I never thought I’d marry for love. I didn’t know it could be like this.”

“How is that?”

“Simple,” Sylvain said.

⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅

Tomorrow, they would take the Imperial capital.

It was very warm this far south, even at night, as the spring began to tip into summer. Not like it had been back in Ailell, the Valley of Torment, where the ground might burst into flames at any moment, but warm enough to remind Felix that he was better suited to the northern climate, and that most of their men were, too. By the time camp was set, the sun had just fallen below the horizon. 

The air was heavy with moisture, with anticipation and exhaustion in equal measure. Despite this, men ate and drank and laughed with each other to their heart’s content around the fires; no one wanted to greet tomorrow just yet. Many would fight and lose their lives in service to the king—honorably, any one of them would say. But few men in this world had truly made peace with death, and most of them had families to return to. The end, one way or another, was near.

Felix dealt with this the way he did every other looming, bloodstained inevitability in his life: by ignoring it, pointedly, and tending to his swords.

Sylvain had been in an obnoxiously cheerful mood for days, which was grating even if Felix _was_ happy for him, but he’d spent the majority of the evening elsewhere—with Mercedes, if Felix had to guess—and he was quiet enough when he returned to their tent that Felix didn’t mind his company as he finished up.

And then they had an unexpected guest.

“Felix. Sylvain.” It came from outside the tent. 

“Yes?” Felix called, bemused, and the tent flap parted to reveal Dedue. It wasn’t large enough to allow Felix to pass through it fully upright; Dedue had to crouch almost comically in the opening. “What do you want?”

“His Majesty would like to speak with you,” Dedue said.

Felix scoffed and finished wiping down his blade. “So he sent you to fetch me? Have his legs been broken? That’ll be a problem come tomorrow. You might have to carry him into battle.”

“His legs are fine.”

“Then he can put them to use and come talk to me himself.”

“I do not think he wants an audience,” Dedue said, sparing a glance at Sylvain, who leaned back into his bedroll and smiled in a way that did not strike Felix as sympathetic.

“This tent’s pretty cramped as it is, buddy,” he added unhelpfully.

An audience. Felix cheeks warmed. If this was about—had Dimitri seen him, after all? Four saints, had he _seen_ him in the woods a few nights ago? He couldn’t think of another reason. They’d had little to say to each other as of late if it was not about tactics or supplies, and they’d already convened for war council earlier that evening. By Dedue’s manner, it didn’t seem battle-related. It didn’t even seem urgent.

But it _was_ a summons from the king.

“Fine, whatever. I’m coming.”

“Good luck,” Sylvain said from his bedroll. Felix rolled his eyes, stood, and slid his weapons back into place before he followed Dedue out of the tent.

“I don’t need to be walked there,” he snapped when they were halfway across camp and Dedue had still not left his side.

“My tent is this way,” was all Dedue said. It was the closest to Dimitri’s—of course it was.

“What does he want with me?”

“Yes, about that. His Majesty might be…confused about why you’re visiting him.”

Felix looked at Dedue, eyes narrowed. “You said he asked to speak with me.”

“No.” Dedue was staring straight ahead. “I said that he would like to.”

Felix stopped. So did Dedue. 

“You mean to say he didn’t actually send for me. You only _think_ he wants to talk.”

“Correct.”

Felix laughed once in disbelief. “I’m going back to my tent,” he said, and turned on his heel.

“He has not said it out loud,” Dedue said, and Felix paused despite every part of his body telling him to bolt. “I do not think he would deign to. After Rodrigue…he does not believe you will ever be able to forgive him.”

“I’m not like you,” he said, petulant. “My loyalty is to Faerghus, not a king.”

“His Majesty and Faerghus go hand in hand.”

“Unfortunately for me.” Felix turned around. “Why are you doing this, anyway? This goes above and beyond duty for a mere _weapon.”_ It was cruel to say, and he knew it. Dedue had proven himself a friend again and again on the battlefield, where Felix had relied on him. 

“I would not usually interfere with His Majesty's personal affairs. But you are both stubborn in your own ways,” Dedue said. “And we don’t know what tomorrow holds.”

“Are you worried we’ll lose?”

“I have complete faith in His Majesty.”

“Of course,” Felix said. “It’s the rest of us you lack faith in.”

Dedue sighed and shook his head. It surprised Felix, but he was starting to notice the subtleties of Dedue’s expressions—between the swing of stoicism and outright fury, a muscle at the front of his brow would twitch when he was growing frustrated or struggling to find the words.

“I know you will not be easily killed,” he said. “But…”

But Dedue had watched his homeland burn to the ground. There was hardly anyone involved in this war who hadn’t lost a loved one, but better than most, Dedue knew it—how quickly a tide could turn. What it was to have everything, and then nothing, just like that. Felix stood a good chance of surviving this, but he wasn’t infallible. Nothing and no one was. Not even Dimitri. Not even Faerghus.

He swallowed. “What would you have me say? That there’s no hard feelings? If you’re hoping for his peace of mind, nothing I lie about will help it along.”

“What either of you have to say is yours to know.”

Felix glowered at his feet. He knew that Dedue was trying to help, in his roundabout way, and he hated that. Since when did Dedue care about his pride? Since when had his pride become something that _needed_ protecting? Would Dedue just throw himself under the wagon any old time he thought it would benefit Dimitri?

Did Dedue think _Felix_ would benefit Dimitri?

“It is your choice,” Dedue said, and that was all. He began to walk again, presumably to retire to his tent.

“Dedue,” Felix said quickly. Dedue stopped and looked at him. “Don’t die tomorrow.”

Dedue’s mouth curved up gently—a smile, Felix realized. He was smiling. “I do not plan on it.”

That struck Felix as odd. He’d expected some ominous platitude about laying down his life to protect _His Majesty,_ with no regard for his own wellbeing. But it was good to hear all the same, and by the time Felix thought to say so, Dedue had continued on and was already out of earshot. 

The hour was growing later. Further down the hills, the fires dimmed.

Felix stood in the middle of the quieting camp, at a crossroads.

Dimitri’s tent was nearly three times as large as the one Felix shared with Sylvain. Of course it was; even during wartime, Dimitri was royalty.

He had dismissed his kingsguard, and for that Felix was grateful, because he hadn’t thought about what he might say to them if Dimitri hadn’t granted him clearance. He was propelled forward by a single burst of blind whim, something he feared he would talk himself out of if he spent another moment thinking it through. When Felix entered the tent, it was with his head held high, but utterly devoid of purpose except to _see_ him.

For some reason he had been picturing Dimitri half-naked and damp, but of course he wasn’t.

Neither was he in his armor, because of the heat or the late hour. Dimitri sat at a cloth-covered table, inked quill in hand, wearing breeches and a simple white shirt that was unlaced at the collar. It revealed a very modest jut of collarbone, still more than Felix had recently seen of him—up close, that was. His eyes were fixed there. He swallowed, thinking of the stream. Of Dimitri in the stream, wearing nothing.

“Felix. Is something the matter?”

Felix wrenched his eyes up to Dimitri’s face, which was drawn with concern. If Felix was coming to him now, he probably thought something was imminently wrong. Perhaps they were being ambushed by Imperial troops, or Claude had turned on them after all, and they’d been left for dead, mounts poisoned and weapons stolen.

Or maybe Dimitri’s meddlesome but honorable vassal had offered Felix an excuse so that he wouldn’t have to face up to the fact that it _was_ his choice to be standing here, in the warm glow of the lamp light, where Dimitri was waiting patiently for an answer. He’d hoped one would come to him, but all he could think about was— 

“I saw you,” Felix blurted. He was immediately horrified, but he couldn’t stop his mouth. “While you were bathing the other night.” Dimitri didn’t move. “It was Sylvain’s fault.”

Well, that was all true, as far as Felix was concerned.

“I see,” Dimitri said slowly. “You…came here to tell me that?” 

Felix’s face was on fire. This was a disaster.

“Yes,” he said. And then, feeling ridiculous, palm pressed to his brow, “Ugh, no. Although—you were an irresponsible fool to stand around naked and unarmed in the middle of the woods this deep in Imperial territory, without any sort of guard. You’re the king. At least take Dedue with you next time.”

“I thought that I’d heard someone approaching, but I…and you…were watching me?”

“What? No!” It came out high, indignant, but he couldn’t stand the idea of Dimitri thinking— “I was there to bathe, too. I wouldn’t—I’m not some— _pervert.”_

Dimitri looked taken aback. “Certainly not. I would never accuse you of—I only meant…” He shook his head as if to clear it, and schooled his face, his voice. “Ah, never mind it. Consider it forgotten. There was something else you needed to speak to me about?”

“No,” Felix said. “It wasn’t important.”

“Felix.”

“Goodnight.” He began to turn again for the tent flap. Never mind what would happen in Enbarr; he was going to kill Dedue _himself,_ right now.

“Wait.” The desk rattled as Dimitri rose. “May I have a word with you, then?”

“Save your speeches for tomorrow,” Felix said, in as gentle a voice as he could manage—which was, by some measure, still serrated. 

“Please. Just a moment of your time.”

Dimitri looked forlorn. He was—not begging, but close enough. It was unbecoming and it made Felix’s skin prickle with irritation.

“Fine. What is it?”

“I…wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me,” Felix said flatly. “And this isn’t a speech?”

“It isn’t for everyone to hear,” Dimitri said. “Though I am grateful for everyone who stood by my side, even when I had no regard for their lives. But you, especially—” 

“I haven’t done anything,” Felix said quickly. “No more than anyone else.”

“I would not have blamed you for abandoning the Kingdom,” Dimitri said. “Abandoning me. After all I’ve done, and all you’ve lost.”

“What was the alternative? Joining the Imperial army? Don’t pretend this gratitude isn’t about circumstance. Maybe you wouldn’t have blamed me, but if I rose up against you, you still would have killed me.”

“Is that why you didn’t?” Dimitri asked. No denial, then. 

Felix looked at him, and meant to say that his loyalty was to his country, to Faerghus—it was on the tip of his tongue. It was what he'd told Dedue. It was logically sound, wasn’t it? To follow a sense of duty passed down to him, to see through an obligation as the last of his line. And maybe he did feel it. He cared about the future of Fódlan, and about all his father left behind. But that didn’t feel like the whole truth. It didn’t even feel like half of it.

“I held onto the hope that you would become a king worth following,” Felix said finally. “And you have. That’s all.”

“Is that not also a matter of circumstance?”

“Do you want me to say that I would have betrayed you? My father? Sylvain and Ingrid? Everyone that I—if you had continued down the path of madness…I—I don’t know. Maybe I would have. Or. Maybe not. I suppose _everything_ is a matter of circumstance.”

“Then I am grateful for the ones at present,” Dimitri said.

“The ones where we’re fighting a war against a millennium-old empire?”

“The ones that allow me to call you my friend.”

It wasn’t the word Felix would have used. He had been friends with Dimitri once—best friends. It had come naturally, easily. It was a friendship unmarred by war or politics or the deaths of thousands, the kind that could only exist between a king that had not yet come to be and a boy that had not yet learned that there was a price to pay for loving him.

Felix was looking everywhere but at Dimitri now. The tent was furnished beyond bedrolls and lanterns, large as it was, decorated with deep blue Kingdom banners and silver-trimmed tapestry of the Blaiddyd crest. There was the writing table. In the back, there was a raised platform, and on it, an actual mattress, piled on with pillows and furs and an ornately embroidered quilt. 

It was too hot for furs, Felix thought.

“Your bed is ridiculous,” he said, because he could not think of anything else. He didn’t want to speak of friendship anymore, or of gratitude.

Dimitri blinked and looked back at it. “Ah…it is certainly better suited to someone who could sleep in it.”

“Are you complaining?”

“You're welcome to it,” Dimitri said. Before Felix could bristle, almost sheepishly, he added, “I had wondered how you were faring with Sylvain. If you would like a decent night’s rest…I plan on keeping myself otherwise occupied.” He motioned to the parchment and inkwell on the desk.

He had wondered. Felix let that settle over him, the idea that Dimitri was thinking of him at all. 

“Sylvain’s room at the academy was next to mine,” Dimitri reminded him. “I was privy to all of his…more raucous…night time habits.” 

Felix’s face felt warm. “What of your night’s rest?”

“There are nights I can sleep, and nights I cannot. When it’s the latter, I’ve learned that it’s better to keep busy.”

“You really think that you can topple the Imperial capital on no sleep.”

Dimitri’s voice sombered. “I will not falter in doing what must be done.”

“You shouldn't waste more energy worrying about me,” Felix said.

To even consider this was inappropriate, from a point of decorum. Dimitri was the king, Felix was not even formally a duke. To take his bed would be frowned upon by almost anyone. Kings did not share their beds with their subjects, except to…which certainly was _not_ the case. And they did not just _give_ their beds up to be kind.

But Dimitri had always been himself before he was a prince or a king, and…what had Sylvain said? That Felix _totally cared_ about propriety? Maybe his courtly relationship with Dimitri had been unconventional from birth, but this was so far outside the realm of convention that Felix had no idea how to parse through it. And then there was the small matter of what had happened near the stream, and everything Felix had tried to ignore since then.

“I’ve made you uneasy,” Dimitri said into the silence.

Felix sucked in a breath. “That’s not—I. You—”

“I understand things might never be—and certainly not now. I should not have presumed.”

“Presumed?” 

“That you would feel comfortable to sleep near me.”

“You think I’m afraid of you.”

Dimitri frowned at him. “Fear and discomfort are not the same thing. It was just an offhanded suggestion—”

“I’ve followed you twice—no, thrice—across the entire bloodstained continent. I think we’re past discomfort. And fear. Do you honestly believe I would be standing here now if it wasn’t my choice alone?”

“I don’t know,” Dimitri said, voice edged with frustration. “I can no longer say with confidence what you would and would not do. Or why.”

Felix flinched. “Well, that goes for the both of us.”

Dimitri caught himself. His brows pinched together, and he let out a weary sigh. “Forgive me. Nothing I mean to say is coming out quite right.”

“Spit it out, then, instead of dancing around your words.”

“Neither of us are the men we were before the war.”

“Obviously.”

“I know we cannot go back, but I do wish to—know you again,” he said, and Felix’s heart stopped. “That you would not turn away from me.”

 _“I’m_ the one that has turned away?” 

Maybe Felix hadn’t gone out of his way to coax Dimitri into a fight since they departed from Garreg Mach, or uttered a word that wasn’t about supplies or battalions since telling Dimitri to stop stringing gravestones around his neck—but this was war near its crux. And Dimitri had not crossed the distance, either.

“I have been chasing your back for as long as I’ve been breathing,” Felix said. “In the past six moons alone, I’ve seen more of it than your stupid face.”

“I am facing you now,” Dimitri said, and it sounded raw; guileless and open in a way he wasn’t, not with Felix. “Is it too late?”

Felix swallowed. “We can talk about this after we stop the emperor.”

A long moment passed between them. And then a strange, small smile upturned the corner of Dimitri’s mouth. It was—melancholy, somehow. “That is probably wise,” he said. “We will, then.”

This was where Felix should have said goodnight and taken his leave. He meant to do so—he told himself to do so. But there was another voice, too, one that riled up that part of himself he wished did not still exist at his age of twenty-three. _Dimitri thinks you’re afraid._

“In the meantime, I’ll take you up on your offer,” he said, with far more confidence than he felt. Dimitri had slept on worse than a bedroll, if he happened to tire.

Dimitri’s eyebrows shot up, but all he asked was, “Will the light disturb you?”

“No.”

Dimitri stepped aside, and Felix walked past him, and the table, all the way to the back of the tent. Perhaps it was because he had not slept in a bed in weeks, but this one seemed even larger up close. Softer, too. Inviting.

But he had not anticipated this. He was fully dressed, and he would need to shuck at least some of his clothing if he was to sleep comfortably. 

Dimitri was still looking at him, as if he could not quite believe it. Felix couldn’t either. He felt like he was swimming through molasses as he freed his swords of his belt and laid them gingerly at the far edge of the bed, and as he sat on the side of it and unbuckled a gaiter. When his fingertips slid beneath it, the nape of his neck grew warm. He cleared his throat, and Dimitri quickly turned his back and sat down at his table again.

Off came the gaiters. Then the boots, and his sword belt, and his overcoat. He drew off clothing until he was wearing nothing but his breeches and a high-necked undershirt. 

It was hot enough that if he were alone, or even with Sylvain, he would have done away with the breeches, too. But Felix was falling slowly toward an end that did not make him feel nearly as in control as it had a few moments ago, and the thought of stripping down to his smalls in Dimitri’s bed was not one he could entertain without that same rush of heat and shame that had come over him a thousand times in the past few days.

“Is it uncomfortable?” Dimitri asked, once Felix had laid down and pulled the quilt over himself. His back was rigid in the wooden chair, broad and still. “I know it’s hot in Adrestia.”

“It’s fine,” Felix said. “Goodnight.”

Dimitri said, “Goodnight.”

Felix closed his eyes.

He was an imbecile; he would never fall asleep like this. It _was_ too hot, and he was too aware of himself, and of Dimitri, and they were to march to Enbarr at sunrise, and the furs beneath him were as soft and luxurious as they looked, but utterly stifling. How did Dimitri stand this? The man was already a walking furnace, and—

Felix could not pinpoint when exactly he’d learned this information, but he didn’t like knowing it, or sitting with it. Laying with it, in Dimitri’s bed. The surreal disbelief of where he was washed over him again and again, like the ceaseless curling waves of the shoreline. When he pressed his nose to the down pillows under the quilt, to somehow ground himself in that knowledge, he found that they only smelled like the dust of the road.

He kept waiting for the telltale scratch of quill against paper—if Dimitri could cast the peculiarity of this situation out of his mind and carry on, Felix could, too. But as the hour stretched on, all he heard were the droning crescendos of crickets and cicadas in the surrounding wood. When Felix finally opened his eyes, he could just see the feather-tip of the quill past Dimitri’s arm, motionless. 

Perhaps he was—thinking. Thinking of whatever he meant to write.

But Dimitri put the quill down and sealed the inkwell. And then he opened the lamp and snuffed it out, casting the tent in darkness except for a single candle’s flame. Felix closed his eyes just as Dimitri rose from his chair, and didn’t dare move.

Dimitri’s gaze had a weight to it. Felix felt it on his face, lingering, and he was conscious of the rise and fall of his own chest, of his breathing, purposefully slowed. He didn’t know why he did it—there was not a reason to feign sleep; Dimitri wouldn’t bother him even if he thought he was awake. It was a habit from childhood, when the nursemaids would look in throughout the night, when Glenn would sometimes crawl in bed with him after waking from a nightmare, and away in the morning, never speaking of it.

There were sounds he didn’t need his eyes to make sense of: the quieted fall of Dimitri’s boots against the ground, treading back and forth. The whisper of paper against itself, against fingertips, a crumpling. A heavy, brisk sigh. More pacing. The parting of the heavy canvas flaps—they’d never been tied closed, Felix realized.

“Do you want your bed back?” It just came out of him. His head lifted from the pillow, and Dimitri turned.

“I thought you were asleep,” Dimitri said. 

“Pretty difficult to sleep with you making a racket.”

“I’m sorry for disturbing you. I’ll just—”

“Roam the woods all night?” Felix scoffed. “Don’t bother anyone else. I’m not going to kick you out of your own tent.”

“Then—” 

“Just—come here.”

“You mean…” 

“Lay down,” he snapped. “If—the bed is more than big enough for two.” It wasn’t strange. It wasn’t. Not stranger than being here in the first place. And it would not be the first time he’d ever slept by Dimitri’s side. 

(Nevermind that the last time had been when they were still children, the year Glenn teased him for still sharing a room with Dimitri at the age of ten. He’d asked for his own room at the palace after that, and cried himself to sleep the first night he spent in it.)

“I’m not certain that’s a good idea,” Dimitri said, but he took a hesitant step toward the bed. Felix couldn’t quite make out his expression in the shadow.

“I’m certain that if you pace about all night you’ll drive us both insane.”

“I wouldn’t want that.” Felix thought that Dimitri sounded a little amused.

“Then lay down—for a while, at least.”

“If you’re certain.”

“I am.” Felix scooted over, to the side he’d laid his swords on. He couldn’t feel the cold metal of their scabbards under the thick quilt, but he still pushed them further toward the edge, and faced them, so that his back was turned when he felt the mattress dip with Dimitri’s weight. 

A momentary shuffling, a dull thunk of boots to the ground. And then Dimitri was laying on top of the quilt beside him, stilled except for his breathing.

Felix thought of what Dimitri had said, and what he knew—that there were nights Dimitri could sleep, and nights he could not. There were the nights he locked himself in his room, and the nights he spent pouring over books in the library, the nights he spent in the training yard, the cathedral, the lonely corridors of the monastery. There were the nights Felix was not present for, full of unimaginable horrors for those five long years, endured and waged alone. Dimitri didn’t speak of them. Neither did anyone else.

Felix asked because he knew that Dimitri would answer him.

“The voices. How often do you hear them?”

“They are ceaseless,” Dimitri said. “Usually. But they are. Quieter. When you are near.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Back at Garreg Mach, when we were sparring—when you did not stop me.” It came out of him like it had thorned its way up his throat. “It was the first time I’d known silence since our academy days.”

Felix’s breath caught. Had it been guilt that stopped Dimitri’s sword? Self-preservation? A divine miracle? He supposed it didn’t matter—he was alive, and so was Dimitri. They’d made it here despite the odds, and tomorrow, one way or another, the moon would rise again over a new Fódlan. But it did not seem enough, all of a sudden, to merely know that, or to feel the emanating warmth of Dimitri at his back.

Felix turned beneath the quilt, and shifted onto his other side, until he was facing him. Dimitri lay on his back, and was looking up into the darkness, painted by the single flickering candle on the table. He was not even an arm’s length away.

“And now?” Felix asked. “What do you hear?”

“…Your voice,” Dimitri said. “And my own.”

“And no one else’s.”

“No.”

His hands were laced across his chest, taking up so little space despite his massive frame; it was Dimitri’s bed, and yet he was holding himself like he was the stranger in it, rigid and tightly-wound. Felix didn’t realize how intently he was staring until Dimitri tilted his head and met his eyes. His cheek barely grazed the pillow. His lips parted, like he meant to speak, and Felix wanted so badly to know what he might say.

But Dimitri only let out a shaky exhale and turned his gaze back up to the top of the tent. “It’s late,” he said, and swallowed. Felix watched his throat move with it. “You should try to get some rest. I’ll do the same.”

Felix had no real reason to argue. He closed his eyes. 

He opened them twenty-four excruciating seconds later, and found that Dimitri was already looking at him. If he was perturbed by having been discovered, it was not as important as whatever he was searching for in Felix’s face—and what that was, or if it was found, Felix didn’t know. He could only stare back wordlessly.

Dimitri turned slowly onto his side, careful not to jostle the bed. They were closer, like this. Felix squeezed his eyes shut again, but he could feel this new proximity, how the whole world narrowed to the space between them. 

He felt a pull that was like the needle of a compass, always fixed north. He could turn over and he would still feel it. He could leave this tent, this encampment, Adrestia; he could cross Fódlan’s borders to Almyra or Sreng; he could sail across the seas to Brigid or Morfis or Albinea and he still would not shake it, the impossible, maddening desire to be nearer. His skin itched with it. There was the same ache he had always known, heightened by severe degrees in the dark.

He wanted so desperately that his breath labored with it. His fingers twitched beneath the heavy quilt, where he forced them to stay, tucked under his ribs. The parting of his mouth, the unconscious tilt forward, he couldn’t control.

Dimitri touched his cheek. Felix nearly gasped at that, the calloused fingers, the sweep of them over his skin a question he leaned into. He kept his eyes closed. His fingers curled in the damp fabric of his shirt. His chin lifted, seeking, and there was one terrible second of anticipation, hope suspended, twisting around inside his stomach like it was trying to claw its way out.

He didn’t hear Dimitri move. But he felt Dimitri’s mouth, dry and warm, pressing tentatively against his own. And something broke inside Felix, then. Like a weathered dam that had held back a flood for centuries, he felt himself crumbling, felt the force of his desire slam past every reservation he still had. Dimitri was kissing him, and it was all Felix could think and feel and do to kiss him back.

He didn’t know _how_ to kiss, not really; he had never done it before. He felt clumsy as he moved his lips with Dimitri’s in awkward, uneven tandem, but he was not deterred. Dimitri wasn’t, either. He cupped the back of Felix’s neck, firm, and deepened the kiss until their tongues slid together. When he broke away to draw in a shuddering breath, Felix felt his exhale, cool in the superheated air between them, and chased it, until their lips were rightly slotted together again. 

He was, decidedly, a fast learner in more than combat.

It happened with dizzying quickness. The tent was filled with the wet clicking of their mouths, the heavy breaths they drew and gasped between kisses, the slide and rustle of cloth. A hand snaked its way out of the quilt to grasp onto Dimitri’s shoulder, and then Dimitri was rolling, leaning over Felix, practically on top of him, too heavy and too hot and not close enough. 

The quilt was a cumbersome thing between them; Felix wanted it gone. Curling the hand that was not touching Dimitri into it and pulling it off of himself was a mindless effort. 

The loud, drawn-out clattering of steel to the ground in the next second was as jarring as any attack or ambush signal would have been. They both started at the noise, and Dimitri jolted away—he caught Felix’s lip in the process, nicking it hard enough to pull a pained hiss from between Felix’s teeth. 

When Felix opened his eyes, it was to find Dimitri’s in the dark, alert and huge with pupil. “What was…”

“…My swords,” Felix managed, touching his lip with a nursing finger, easing himself up enough to cast a look over the side of the bed and push the oppressive weight of the quilt from his body. It was embarrassing, that this had been what had pulled him back to his senses. That this was what had broken the spell. His swords. His _fucking—_

“Oh,” Dimitri said. He sounded dazed. He seemed to come back to himself one slow, blinking second at a time. “I hurt you.”

Felix snorted and ran his tongue over his lip. He tasted copper, but the sting was a dull, far-away thing. “I doubt the wound’s mortal,” he said.

It was difficult to think. They had just been kissing. Desperately, hotly kissing. Felix’s mouth felt swollen with it. There was a brand on the back of his neck where Dimitri’s palm had rested. There was everything between them, spilled, and Felix could not bring himself to regret it. He’d wanted, so, so badly. He still did.

“Felix.”

“Don’t.” It was quick, sharp. Felix found the open neck of Dimitri’s shirt, and gathered the soft fabric into a fist, holding him there. He forced himself to look Dimitri in the eye, to hold it, so that there was no question of his certainty.

Dimitri’s expression crumbled, gaze falling again to Felix’s mouth, a punch to the gut. He was so sure of it, now—that Dimitri wanted him like this, too.

“Don’t hold back now, boar.”

Dimitri took his face in both hands, and kissed him.

It was not gentle. Felix was reminded of the split in his lip, that single bright spot of pain a tether as he kissed back, newly emboldened. The hand that fisted his shirt fell away, and then found it again, untucking it from Dimitri’s breeches. Felix slid his palm beneath, to feel skin instead of fabric. It was sticky with sweat, smooth over firm muscle beneath his wandering fingers, and the image of Dimitri in the stream came to him again with a heavy pulse of arousal.

Dimitri broke away, and Felix nearly protested, except that his mouth found Felix’s neck in the next second, a slick pressure that made goosebumps rise all over his body. He made a small, pleasured sound, and could not help writhing when Dimitri peeled the neck of his shirt down to lick beneath it.

It was in the way. Everything was in the way, the quilt, the furs, his clothes and Dimitri’s. It was too damn hot for any of it; Felix didn’t know how he’d endured this until now.

There was a rip—unmistakably, the neck of his shirt, ripped all the way down to his chest by Dimitri’s hand. Felix felt the air hit his skin, and any thought of reprimand or complaint flew out of his mind when Dimitri set his teeth against his collarbone. Felix arched against him, both hands sliding now under Dimitri’s damp shirt, trekking up, nails digging in in silent retribution.

He was hard. He’d been hard—since Dimitri had first touched him, he realized. He hadn’t touched himself in months—certainly not since the incident—and his body was nearly vibrating now with the desire to come, just from kissing. He was so utterly out of his element, he thought, and pushed insistently at Dimitri’s shirt until he sat up and tore it over his head.

The scars were visible even in the dark, littered pale over Dimitri’s chest, his shoulders, and his arms in excess, healed and cut and healed and cut and healed again. Felix’s own body was the same, that of a warrior’s given completely to his Kingdom. The scars were a map of everything, proof that he’d fought and won every time, that he still lived. That they both had.

Felix had other shirts. He tore the one he wore the rest of the way down, so that when Dimitri leaned down to take his mouth again, he could feel his bare skin against his own, and delight in it.

Dimitri was hard, too. Felix felt it against his thigh, something that was both familiar and foreign, hotter than the rest of him. It felt natural to let his hand wander down between them and palm at it, more to sate his own curiosity than to make Dimitri jerk and moan into his mouth, though he did not dislike that, either. Dimitri let him feel, rocking into his touch, hand tangled almost painfully in Felix’s hair.

He eventually tore away, panting. “Felix—if you—”

“Already?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do,” Felix said, unlacing Dimitri’s breeches. “But I want—”

“Oh. Yes,” Dimitri said, “yes.” 

Dimitri’s forehead fell to his shoulder as Felix touched him. His cock was heavy in Felix’s hand, thicker around than he was used to, pulsing and hot with blood. There was a bead of wetness at the tip, and he smeared his thumb across it, slicked it down over the underside.

Dimitri was, apparently, not a quiet lover. He gave himself freely, not bothering to quell any of his reactions or sounds as Felix worked his hand over him as best he could at this angle. Felix felt his breath coming faster as he listened, cock aching where it was still confined in his own pants.

“What does it feel like?” he asked. “Like touching yourself?”

“No—nothing like it,” Dimitri said. “Better. Better than anything, I’m—”

“Touch me, too,” he said, hand falling away. “I want to feel—”

Dimitri listened. He hauled his weight up onto one arm, and reached between them, unlacing Felix’s breeches with surprising dexterity, given how savagely he’d torn his shirt apart just a while ago. And then all thoughts of ruined clothing flew out of his mind, because Dimitri was touching him, curling his fingers around his cock, and he was _right—_ it was nothing like when Felix touched himself.

It was better, and more, almost devastatingly. It would only take a few strokes, he realized. And he didn’t want to come like this. He didn’t want either of them to come like this.

He said, “Fuck me.”

There were special oils for that, he knew, expensive and sweet-smelling, capped in ornate glass bottles and vials so that they looked elegant on bath shelves. There were the dark, discreet bottles sold in tucked-away shops and merchant stands, the kind that promised extra heat and pleasure. There were unremarkable oils, the kind used for cooking, for greasing, for keeping lamps lit. The kind that would do. 

“Like this,” Dimitri said, taking both of their cocks in his own large hand now, fisting with practiced, delightful pressure. “We could—”

“No,” Felix gasped, stilling him. He was trying so hard to hold onto lucidity. “It’s not—” _Enough._ It wasn’t enough. He said, “I want you to _fuck_ me. As in I want you to put your—"

“But—I don't—” 

“The lamp,” Felix said, and watched Dimitri’s face as he moved through the same line of thought he had just a moment ago. 

Dimitri said, “The lamp.”

Felix said, “Hurry up.”

When Dimitri rose and made for the table, Felix shucked the rest of his clothes and kicked the quilt to the ground with a vengeance. His hair had come loose. His skin was sweat-damp, prickling with so much heat that he wanted to tear that off, too. His chest took on a rapid rise and fall as he watched Dimitri step out of his own pants and fumble to extract the oil bowl from the lamp without breaking it, to not spill it all as he came back to bed, kneeling carefully onto the furs. He paused there, hesitating.

“Ah—how…” he began.

Felix made an efficient decision. He inched further up the bed, and spread his thighs in offering, baring all of himself. He knew the color of his face by its temperature, and was grateful for the dim.

Dimitri followed him. He kept his eyes on Felix’s, as if he knew looking down just then would have been too much for them both. He crawled up until he was situated between Felix’s legs, holding himself carefully; a massive, ruthless beast made _shy._

“Are you going to—I’ll do it myself,” Felix said, when Dimitri made no move to touch him. He extended his hand for the bowl, but Dimitri held it just out of his reach. 

“I want to,” Dimitri said. “If you’ll allow me.”

Felix huffed, chagrined. “We don’t have all night.”

"Don't we?" Dimitri touched his fingers to the oil experimentally, swirling them in the shallow pool before pouring some of it into his palm.

“Some of us actually _do_ need sleep to— _Seiros,”_ Felix hissed. 

Dimitri was touching him. The oil was still warm from burning, warmer than skin or the furs—too hot, nearly, against this sensitive part of him—but it wasn’t painful. It balmed the insistent press of Dimitri’s fingers, blunt against his body’s resistance. Felix willed himself to relax.

 _“Oh,”_ Dimitri said, breaching him. Self-consciousness forgotten, his eye was fixed to where his fingertip pushed in. He was inside, but only just. “It’s. You feel—”

The tendons in Felix’s thighs were trembling. He knew how it felt; he’d had his own fingers there before. It was warm, tight. Impossible, it seemed, that anything remotely larger than a couple of fingers could fit inside. He’d been too afraid to try, back then, and too embarrassed to seek out any of the polished stone toys Dorothea had seen fit to talk about in excruciating detail—and showed him, once, just to watch him squirm.

He regretted that now, as he watched Dimitri’s cock, flushed and bobbing with interest against his taut stomach. It was—well. Larger than his own, in any case. And that was to go— 

Dimitri’s finger slid deeper, and Felix’s breath whooshed out of him with a quiet swear as he began fucking it slowly in and out. The other fingers smeared across his hole, spreading the oil around, and Felix felt it dripping down the curve of his ass in excess. His own fingers dug white-knuckled into the back of his knee, and he was so aware of the way he opened himself to this, the way his cock dampened his own stomach, the way his hips lifted of their own accord, seeking. He could hardly stand to look. 

His head hit the pillow, eyes briefly shuttered, other hand anchored in the long tangle of his hair, and allowed himself to just _feel._ It was easier like that.

When he opened them again, it was through his lashes, and it was to find Dimitri gazing helplessly, desperately back. 

“Felix, I want to—can I—” 

“Yes.” Strangled. “Do it.”

More oil, the last of it, fumbled and poured over his cock, all over the expensive furs. Ruined, Felix thought, and didn’t care. The empty brass bowl landed somewhere on the bed. Dimitri crawled up and leaned over him. He held his weight, not touching, but caging, an arm on either side of Felix’s head. 

He knew what was in Dimitri’s gaze. It was not just hunger. It was something that echoed inside Felix, a dampening, sober thought he pushed away. He shifted, and the weight of Dimitri’s cock slid away from his thigh and against his hole, firm. Felix steeled himself. He would do this.

Dimitri licked his lips. “I—”

“Don’t say it,” Felix said, panting. Stupid, sentimental boar.

“I only want to say—” 

“Shut up—don’t you _dare,_ just—” 

“Alright,” Dimitri said. His oiled fingers touched the edge of Felix’s jaw, and slid down his neck. He held his eyes. He said, again, too fervently, “Felix.”

“Get on with it, already.”

And then Felix gasped, because Dimitri took his cock in his hand and began to push into him, in and in and in, patient and slow but so _deep._ Felix could feel how full he was with it, how his body parted and clenched around every inch, until Dimitri’s hips were flush. He couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad feeling. It was an exceptionally obtrusive and foreign pressure inside him, teetering on the knife’s edge of too much. 

Dimitri seemed to sense this. He did not attempt to pull out, or to start fucking Felix in earnest—his movements were small, shallow, as if he was trying to keep valiantly still but couldn’t completely help himself. The sensation drew a pitiful sound out of Felix that he couldn’t bear to watch Dimitri react to, so he clenched his eyes shut and turned his head stubbornly to the side. 

“Am I hurting you?”

“I’m not a maiden,” Felix grit, but it did not sound as scathing as he meant it to be.

Dimitri did still, then.

“If it’s uncomfortable—”

“It’s _fine._ ” 

“Will you look at me?”

“I want this,” Felix insisted between clenched teeth. His nails dug into Dimitri’s forearms. His eyes were still closed. “I can take it.”

_“Felix.”_

Dimitri’s voice took on a different, commanding quality, one that briefly drew Felix’s awareness from where they were connected. His eyes fluttered open. With effort, he turned his head and looked at him.

Dimitri looked terrified. It was in his eye, his brow, the working muscle in his jaw—uncertainty tinged with pleasure, guilt stifled by desire. It struck Felix that neither of them had any idea how they were meant to do this. Not just fuck, but to allow themselves the pleasures of it. To grapple with what lay between them, to know which parts to lay bare and which to shut out long enough to see it through.

“This isn’t a battle, you know,” Dimitri said. “I won’t have you endure it.”

But it was, Felix thought. He’d been fighting since the moment he’d entered the tent, and long before. Felix’s entire life was a series of battles; this was no different, except that it wasn’t with an enemy this time. It wasn’t even really with Dimitri.

Did he want to run or unfurl? He didn’t know. He’d hadn’t for a while. His skin burned; his chest ached. He needed to do _something._

“Maybe. We could—differently,” he said.

Dimitri blinked. “Do you mean…” 

It took a moment for the realization to sweep over Felix, but when it did, his stomach twinged with a different kind of desire. It wasn’t an immediately unappealing idea, to indulge in the more familiar sensation of burying himself in tight heat; or to have Dimitri in this position, overwhelmed and helpless as Felix felt. He recalled besting Dimitri in the training yard; what it had been like to have the huge, powerful mass of him at his mercy.

_I yield._

Not a battle, he reminded himself.

As it was, Felix was already oiled and full of cock, which he was growing used to as the seconds ticked by, and it occurred to him that their current arrangement didn’t require that he be the one on his back.

“I _mean,”_ Felix said, arms linking around Dimitri’s neck, pulling himself up until he could hide his face there, “that I want to set the pace.”

“Oh,” Dimitri breathed. 

He was solid, a steady anchor even as he lifted one hand to Felix’s side, skimming down and over his hip before it slid between the furs and his lower back, where it splayed and lifted him. Felix was briefly jostled, and the angle changed, and he let out another undignified noise that startled Dimitri in turn, and it all resulted in Dimitri’s cock slipping out of him with a wet, heavy _shlick_ as he settled back on his knees.

Felix felt very empty, then. He clenched around nothing in Dimitri’s lap, mouth opened against his shoulder, protest barely caught in his throat. He’d expected Dimitri to lie back right away—he didn’t understand why they’d paused here, in this space where they were even closer than they’d been moments ago, where Felix had no choice but to cling to him. He felt the tension in his own body, the way he trembled. He felt Dimitri against him, the warmth of his chest; the wild heartbeat shared between them, the breath.

“Felix…”

A hand threaded through the hair at the back of his head, and another smoothed down his spine with a gentleness that was so at odds with who Dimitri was now, that Felix had not seen in him since their time at the Academy, that he had not _known_ since the days of their youth, until now, as he braced himself through it.

“Tell me you want this,” Dimitri said.

“I already did.”

“I want you to mean it. We will have time to—”

“You don’t _know_ that,” Felix said. His voice was hoarse. His arms tightened around Dimitri’s neck. “And neither do I.”

Maybe it wasn’t the right time, but it never had been, and now time was no longer a luxury he had. They’d already waited too long— _Felix_ had waited too long. And, tomorrow, if…well, he would still have this. He would know what it felt like to have this, no matter how things turned out. It mattered more than things being _right._

He turned his face into Dimitri’s neck again. He couldn’t say that, not on his life, but he could be honest.

“I do. Want you.” 

It was the first time he’d ever said it out loud. It came so quiet he thought it might be missed, but knew that it was heard when Dimitri shivered beneath him. Felix liked that. He pressed his parted mouth to Dimitri’s throat, felt the pulse thrumming steady under his skin. 

“I’ve wanted you,” Dimitri said, voice low and rumbling against Felix’s lips, “for as long as I can remember.”

Felix stirred to life with a startled breath. His nose skimmed up Dimitri’s unshaven jaw, until their mouths were ghosting together, aching with the last vestiges of hesitance. He didn’t want to think anymore. He didn’t want to talk.

Felix whispered, against his lips, “Show me.”

Dimitri fell into him like he was helpless to it. They kissed, and the sweetness of it was cloying; an excruciatingly intimate, tender thing. It hurt, almost, to be kissed this way. There was no urgency to it, no desperation to hide behind now. He felt the magnitude of all that lay between them, said and unsaid, answered and not. Dimitri’s palm slid up between his shoulder blades, and Felix thought it might be all that was keeping him stitched together—that if Dimitri let his hands fall away, he would come apart completely. 

Dimitri’s cock began to harden again against his stomach, heavy and still slick with oil. There was a slow, rocking motion he couldn’t help. Dimitri groaned into his mouth as they moved together, and when they broke apart, Felix looked down between their bodies and found them both wanting.

“Like this,” Felix said.

“Yes.” Dimitri’s hands slid down Felix’s body, until he reached his hips, and pressed his thumbs into the vee there, encouraging. Felix rose up on his knees, feeling blindly for Dimitri’s cock, aligning it with himself, the barest, promising pressure. “Please,” Dimtiri said, bereft.

Felix sank down, a slow, smooth glide, breath shuddering out of him as he was finally filled. Dimitri made a low noise, grip tightening around his hips. Their foreheads were pressed together, Felix’s hair a dark curtain, shrouding them.

He moved. It was better, like this, the angle, the control, the steady friction against his own weeping cock as he worked himself over Dimitri, lifting and falling in a shallow, hot rhythm. It was—everything. To be this full, to feel this much. How many times had he thought of it? And it was nothing like he’d ever imagined it to be. It was _more,_ in every sense, in every slide and gasp and moan.

He felt the sweat-slick slide of his thighs over Dimitri’s. He fucked himself faster, finding his own pleasure, and Dimitri’s palm slid to his lower back, encouraging. He sought his mouth again in a kiss, but Felix could hardly kiss him back, mouth open and panting, a mess of sliding tongue and teeth.

And then Dimitri took Felix’s cock in his hand, and something tore out of him that sounded like a sob—an anguished, pitiful sound. He was so close. It felt inevitable, sudden, like the ground coming up to meet him. He remembered the stars in the sky above Garreg Mach, the way they had spun, and the way Dimitri had spun into him, a force of nature. He came, pulsing and shuddering, spilling over Dimitri’s ceaselessly working fist.

It almost escaped him—it was on the tip of his tongue, that childish nickname, fitting for the soft young prince Dimitri had been once. _Dima._ He bit it back, into his own tender lip, and shook violently through his climax.

“Felix—I’m—”

His back hit the bed. He felt carved raw, loose and open. His hands landed somewhere above his head, and Dimitri’s found them, lacing through.

If Dimitri held too tightly as he chased completion, if the bones in Felix’s fingers ached from being pressed into the bedding, if every push into his sensitive body made white burst behind his eyes, he thought it was all that kept him anchored, and that he would remember this every day of his life, whether that was one or thousands more.

It was later—so late into the night that Felix knew sunrise was not far away, when they had both come back to themselves enough to wipe the sweat and come from their bodies and lay in sated silence, that Dimitri saw fit to ask.

“Have you ever…with others?”

“Was it not obvious?” Felix huffed, looking purposefully away. He refused to be embarrassed about it—he wasn’t like Sylvain; he had no time for illicit lovers back at the Officer’s Academy, and had little interest in them anyway. His hand had been a fit enough companion since he was old enough to experience the occasional nuisance of being aroused.

Though it didn’t seem so much like a nuisance now. Hadn’t been.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Dimitri said. “I only wondered because I, myself…I had not—until now.”

Felix glanced at him. “Ever?”

“Is that hard to believe?”

Felix thought about it. “No,” he said. 

Dimitri _laughed_ a little. Felix was caught off guard by it, by the bright, familiar swell of sound. It hadn’t changed. Despite everything else, it hadn’t changed.

“No, I suppose not,” Dimitri said, the smile still in his voice. “Not for Sylvain’s lack of effort.”

Felix made a disgruntled noise of acknowledgement at that. Sylvain’s concern for the intimate lives of others had long been the bane of his existence. 

He would be pleased with himself to know what had happened. Felix weighed the consequences of returning to his tent now versus the morning—tomorrow, the implications would be impossible to deny with any believability, but at least he would have his wits about him. Now he felt too unguarded; vulnerable in a way that could not be remedied by dressing and spending the night alone on a hard bedroll. 

And he did not want to go.

“Do you need to finish what you were writing?” he asked.

“No,” Dimitri said gently. He tucked Felix’s hair behind his ear, a reverent touch that left his skin burning. “It’s no longer necessary.”

“What was it?”

“A letter. To you.”

Felix narrowed his eyes. “You were writing me a letter.”

“I meant to leave it with the professor, in case I never got the chance to—” Dimitri pressed his lips together, then tried again. “There is much I want to tell you. More than can be told in a single letter, or even a night, truly.”

“Then tell me another time.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to hear your last testament,” Felix snapped. “You're such a hypocrite.” He was no better, but he couldn’t take it. He drew close, until he could lay his head against Dimitri’s chest, and said fiercely, _“Win._ Then you can tell me everything that’s in that letter, and everything that isn’t.”

Dimitri’s hand drew slowly up Felix’s back, and back down again, featherlight. “Yes,” he said, and he sounded certain. “I will.”

He didn’t say anything else. The tension slowly seeped out of Felix’s body, and he lost himself to the sensation of being touched, to the way Dimitri’s chest rose and fell with even breath beneath his cheek, still slicked with oil and sweat despite their efforts. He closed his eyes, and was asleep before he knew it.

When he woke again, it was the very early morning, not yet light. Camp was quiet and still outside the tent, but everyone would soon rise to pack up.

Even sleep-addled, Felix was conscious of the fact that it was Dimitri’s tent he was in. That it was Dimitri’s bed; Dimitri’s arm laid against him; Dimitri’s legs entwined with his; Dimitri’s breath slow and steady somewhere across the way, not far.

The night had brought drastic relief from the sweltering heat of the afternoon, but the furs below stuck unpleasantly to Felix’s skin, and there was a thin layer of sweat between the places he and Dimitri touched. It was disgusting. He still didn’t mind it as much as he thought he should.

He was afraid to open his eyes and find Dimitri already awake. The stillness of the morning felt fragile, like something precious and ephemeral that Felix could briefly hold between his palms, if he were gentle enough. He even breathed shallowly, so afraid to disturb the quiet, to ripple it, to scare away this contentment.

But Dimitri was still asleep. When Felix was sure of this, he peeked open his eyes, and blinked to clear them. At some point in the night, Dimitri’s eyepatch had slipped off.

Even in the dim, it was apparent why he wore it. 

The scar tissue took up the whole of where his eye had been, deeply sunken and uneven, severe even fully healed. Felix couldn’t tell what had caused it. It didn’t look like any battlefield wound he’d ever seen. It was wide in diameter, neatly rounded in shape, like it had been deliberately done that way. Like it had been carved. Which was ridiculous, because there was no living being on this earth that could hold Dimitri down long enough to get away with it.

But then Felix thought of the Dimitri from five years ago, captured after the attack on Garreg Mach—imprisoned for regicide, sentenced to death. He thought of Cornelia, cruel and wicked. If she had been the one to—

No. No, he wouldn’t make his own guesses. That was one of the things Dimitri could tell him later, in time.

Felix let his gaze wander over the slack of Dimitri’s mouth, the plane of his cheek, the straight line of his nose; an indulgence he was tentatively allowing himself. It lingered on his other eye, the good one, and the golden lashes that fanned from it, the lock of golden hair that fell into them. So familiar were these features, but Felix hadn’t seen them like this since they were children. They were neither mask nor beastly contortion; it was only Dimitri’s face as he slept, untroubled for once.

Felix would stay until first light. He wouldn’t risk waking Dimitri from rare slumber by moving, by extracting himself, by dressing and leaving the tent. He would let them both have this, another few minutes of peace in the dark, where monsters, in this place, did not exist.

⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅

After the war, Sylvain and Mercedes were wed at Garreg Mach Monastery by the archbishop, formerly known as the professor of the Blue Lions house. The ceremony was a traditional and unadorned affair, attended only by their closest friends and family, which was said to include the king. 

Felix, newly anointed as Duke Fraldarius, presented the rings on the same blade he’d fought with in battle. A larger, celebratory festival was later held in the town, and if the man in common clothes that Felix stole away with looked anything like the king, the townsfolk thought that it was too ridiculous to be true.

When Felix’s journals were recovered more than a century after his passing, they were revered as a colorful retelling of the Kingdom’s history, and were published far and wide. They painted lively portraits of a number of prominent noble families of the time, including his own House Fraldarius. Most notably, they detailed the daily life of his role as advisor—and lover—to King Dimitri I, which in Felix’s own words, was “ever-complicated by the trials of the past and future.” 

It was also written, however, that he finally understood what Sylvain meant all that time ago: that love _was_ complicated, more complicated than anything else he knew—except for when it was simple. And Felix and Dimitri’s love, in all its forms, was cherished; survived by their friends, children, and those whose hearts it would touch for centuries to come.

☾☾☾

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t think i’ve ever poured more of myself into a fic than i did with this one. writing fic is definitely how i get to know characters, and i feel so much for these two after sitting with them for this long ;-; 
> 
> if you enjoyed this, or if any part of it resonated with you in some way, i would love to hear your thoughts. thank you so, so much for reading.
> 
> ps. i’m so sorry for making sylvain an obnoxious snorer but he deserves it u.u to be fair i used to have the same problem (with snoring, not womanizing) so sylvain is actually just me if i existed in imperial year 1185 and never had a tonsillectomy. i too would wife mercedes
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ikvros)! i also have a dimilix [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ep7ao1gCtf8O4kONuhqFa?si=d-iFrQxuTvqnAswMW20xuA) :-)


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